Hao Wu - still no word
I'm reposting something that I put up in March - for those new readers to my blog, please read this, check out the links, put up a technorati tag, get involved. Hao Wu is still being detained and his family and friends have had no word as to his whereabouts or health. Here's my original post:
FREE HAO WU
I've read a lot about people in police states or oppressive countries getting carted off by secret police or detained unfairly. But it always seemed very distant and improbable until it happened to a friend of my sister's. Hao Wu, a Chinese documentary filmmaker, is being detained (a polite way to say 'arrested and jailed') by the Chinese authorities. The reason for his detention is as yet unknown. His friends and families have asked bloggers to spread the word to get global support and media attention in order to facilitate Hao's release.
Lisa wrote about it on her blog, so please check out her post. It's a lot more meaningful and personal than anything I can say. For more information on how you can help, go here.
http://ethanzuckerman.com/haowu/
FREE HAO WU
I've read a lot about people in police states or oppressive countries getting carted off by secret police or detained unfairly. But it always seemed very distant and improbable until it happened to a friend of my sister's. Hao Wu, a Chinese documentary filmmaker, is being detained (a polite way to say 'arrested and jailed') by the Chinese authorities. The reason for his detention is as yet unknown. His friends and families have asked bloggers to spread the word to get global support and media attention in order to facilitate Hao's release.
Lisa wrote about it on her blog, so please check out her post. It's a lot more meaningful and personal than anything I can say. For more information on how you can help, go here.
technorati tags: freehaowu
http://ethanzuckerman.com/haowu/
posted by Dana Fredsti @ 2:38 PM
5 Comments:
At 9:09 PM,
Anonymous said…
What is just as offensive, and should be to U.S. Americans, is how Companies like "microsoft" and "Google" (the latter of whom provides blogspot blogs) companies that were able to start and rise to prominence under the auspices of the freedom to achieve that is uniquely american, how these same companies now giants in their industries cave to the demands of Communist China in order that they might still continue to do business within that country. In effect "selling out American values" for the benefit of capitalist profit.
Companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google (and I'm not well researched on this subject, but I'm sure there are a few more) censor their search results and allow government officials unfettered access to what might otherwise be considered private information. (Although with G.W. and the NSA spy scandals I don't imagine the U.S. is too far behind China).
Those companies that do business with China and assist them in the suppression of their (the chinese) people are and should be held just as responsible for china's human rights violations as the communist Chinese Government itself.
Unfortunately knowing China's methods of operations. There's no guarantee that Mr Wu is even still alive (although one can always hope).
At 9:49 PM,
Malnurtured Snay said…
Good post, great cause. I'll figure out the linking stuff tomorrow and put it on my sidebar.
At 8:45 AM,
Dana Fredsti said…
Thanks, MS!
And JB, I thought Google was trying to fight handing out our info...
At 11:50 AM,
Anonymous said…
Zhadi wrote: I thought Google was trying to fight handing out our info...
That's actually only in the U.S. different country different standards.
In China google provides "government censored search results."
To obtain the Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country's government finds objectionable. Google bases its censorship decisons on guidance provided by Chinese government officials.
To their credit google does claim that it does not keep personally identifying information on users in China.
Yahoo is perhaps the worst offender because it turns over identifying information to the chinese government of users of it's free "yahoo email" and as a result in one case:
Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist now serving ten years in prison for sending politically sensitive information in an e-mail using a Yahoo account.
Google to their credit decided not to release gmail in china because they didn't want to deal with that sort of situation.
Here's one article about the subject:
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/133622/1/4536
The BBC also has a similar article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5024874.stm
And In January Microsoft Microsoft removed the blog of Chinese journalist Zhao Jing from its MSN Spaces service at the end of December, saying that it was complying with the country's law in doing so.
Article on that can be found here:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/48173.html
As I've said before I'm not an expert on this subject, but one has to wonder if they'll do it over there just to be in business. With the current political climate here in the U.S. (Patriot Act, NSA domestic spying, etc) it's only a matter of time before it happens here.
At 9:51 PM,
Dana Fredsti said…
Wow...Thank you for all that info! I hope that Google sticks oi their guns here in the U.S...and we can hope that the political climate shifts here...
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